All this week, David Barrett will be blogging on the sights, sounds and action from Augusta National and the Masters. Today David tells you about some spots on the golf course that you won't necessarily see on television.
- GolfObserver editors
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AUGUSTA, Ga. - The Augusta National course is endlessly fascinating. Of course, we're all familiar from television with the beauty and charm of the 12th hole, the risk/reward nature of the 13th, the difficulty of the 18th, etc. But there are some lesser known places on the course that are of interest, too. Let's take a hole-by-hole look:
1st Hole:
Behind the first green is a great spot to watch all the leaders come through on Sunday to see if they get off to a nervous start. This is a tough par four if it plays into the wind, and also if the hole is located on the front left or anywhere at the back of the green. If a player gets too greedy firing at the flag and is a little bit off, instead of putting for birdie he'll roll down a drop-off and have a nearly impossible up and down.
In the drive landing zone, there are trees to the right of the fairway and beyond those a compound that once was a parking area. Back in 1968, amateur Marty Fleckman, playing in his first Masters after threatening to win the U.S. Open the year before, blocked his drive so far to the right that it found that area. He turned to an official on the tee and said, "Is that out of bounds?" "I don't know," came the reply. "Nobody has ever hit it there."
2nd Hole:
To the left of the fairway, practically invisible, is a small creek at the bottom of a drop-off. It doesn't get much action, but if your ball trickles down the pine needles into that hazard there's no faster way to turn a birdie hole into a bogey.
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There are two bunkers to the left of the fairway, installed in the 1960s, that see practically no action. The percentage play is simply to lay up into the wider part of the fairway short of the bunkers, as there's not much to be gained on this 350-yard par four by challenging them. In fact, the only player I ever remember seeing in either of these bunkers was Jeff Maggert in 2003. He was leading the tournament on Sunday when his second shot caught the lip of the bunker and came back and hit him for a devastating two-stroke penalty. (That same year, Tiger Woods was enticed to try to drive near the green because the tees were moved up and the bunkers weren't in play for him, but he ran into trouble on the right side and made a double bogey.)
4th Hole:
If you're ever in Augusta, the closest you can physically come to the course itself is not the front gate on Washington Road, it's driving past the fourth green on Berckmanns Road. The course is only about 10 yards away, but your view will be mostly obscured by a row of tall bushes.
5th Hole:
If you're lucky enough to get your hands on a ticket for the practice rounds or tournament, do yourself a favor and walk this hole. Not many spectators do--most cut over to the sixth green--but if you make the uphill climb you'll be rewarded by not having to look over many heads to see the action. If you do make the cut-off down to the sixth, check out the spot to the left of the sixth green, where Seve Ballesteros hit his drive on No. 5 during his 1980 victory and escaped with a shot that climbed over the tall trees on the hillside in front of him.
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This is a rare place where spectators can sit right in the line of play of a hole, in an area where the par-three hole plunges downhill from an elevated tee. The spot affords a nice view of both the sixth and 16th greens. The sixth green can be treacherous. Jose Maria Olazabal was in contention until he ran into trouble chipping and putting here and made a quadruple bogey, matching the highest score ever on the hole. "It's always good to have the record," he said afterwards.
7th Hole:
Once a short par four, this has been stretched to 450 yards by building a new tee. You never would have envisioned this tee 10 years ago. Not only did the club have to cut down some trees to buid it, it had to tear down a maintenance building.
8th Hole:
It would be a blind uphill second shot anyway, but two large humps in the fairway at the top of the hill make it even more dramatically so (this is another hole where spectators rarely make the uphill climb). Check out the trees to the right of the fairway, where Jack Nicklaus nearly found disaster on the way to his sixth Masters title in 1986. Desperate to get something going, he tried to hit a 3-wood through a narrow opening. He missed that opening, but fortunately found another and managed a par; he went on to birdie the ninth and shoot a 30 on the back nine. If his second shot had hit a tree and ricocheted back to him, that charge might not have been possible.
9th Hole:
There's a crosswalk in this fairway some 90 yards from the green. That's where long hitters were hitting their drives on this hole until it was extended back to 460 yards. Now they once again have a downhill lie to an uphill green, but they might find a more level area of the fairway that Augusta National founder and chairman Clifford Roberts reportedly had installed in a spot where his drives often ended up.
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10th Hole:
There's a beautiful amoeba-like bunker about 60 yards short of the green that serves only an aesthetic purpose. While not coming into play, it does help make this a beautiful hole. When the course was first built in 1932, this bunker was directly in front of the putting surface, but only a few years later the green was moved back to its current site. Back in the fairway is an example of how designers Alister MacKenzie and Bobby Jones made excellent use of the terrain. This hole plays dramatically downhill, but the left side of the landing area dips more sharply and provides even more roll. That's the preferred spot for the tee shot, but go too far left and you're in double bogey territory.
11th Hole:
If you're walking the course, notice that the member's tee is mercifully some 120 yards ahead of the back tee on this 505-yard par four--another instance where Augusta chopped down some lumber to make a new back tee. Of course, they planted new trees on the right side of the fairway. Tiger Woods broke his 4-iron playing a second shot from next to one of those trees in 2007, but good luck finding it (it's not marked by a plaque, though it may be scarred by his 4-iron).
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Just on the other side of a fence behind the green is the ninth fairway of adjacent Augusta Country Club. To the left of the green is a steep pine-needle bank dotted with bushes where players sometimes come to grief. Scott Simpson actually lost a ball there one year to spoil a round where he shot 32 on the front nine. "Yeah, you lose a lot of balls at Augusta National," Simpson said after the round. A funny line, but he wasn't laughing--there was steam coming out of his years.
13th Hole:
If a player doesn't turn his tee shot right-to-left off the tee, he can find himself in a group of trees to the right of the fairway (this is why many players hit 3-woods off the tee on the par five). It was in this area that Ben Crenshaw in 1984 said he saw Billy Joe Patton, then an Augusta member and tournament official, sitting. Seeing Patton, who lost the 1954 Masters as an amateur by hitting into the water on 13 and 15, led Crenshaw to lay up and he went on to win the title. Later reports indicated that Patton was not even there.
14th Hole:
This is another hole often skipped by spectators, so you can get a good view from behind the green. And an interesting green it is. The most obvious feature is a huge hump near the front of the green, but more subtle, unless you look at the overall slope of the land, is that the entire green slants from left to right. There's just enough of a flat spot built in to the left back corner of the green to make a very difficult pin position to get to.
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15th Hole:
This is an unusual par five in that it is a gamble to lay up. True, it's a risk to go for it with your second shot with water in front of the green (and even behind it, where the pond on the 16th hole is in play). But if you lay up, you face a difficult pitch from a downhill lie over the water. Even some of the best pros in the game have chunked their third shot into the water--and a number have compounded the error by doing it again on their fifth shot, after a penalty drop, most notably Vijay Singh when he was in contention in the final round in 2002.
16th Hole:
This is a popular spot for spectators because of the drama that it has produced--Tiger's chip-in in 2005, Nicklaus' putt in 1975, etc. This year Augusta has given more fans a chance at the experience, as it has expanded the area for spectators on the hillside to the left of the green. It's a popular spot in practice rounds, too, especially with the new tradition of players providing entertainment by trying to skip balls across the pond and onto the green during practice.
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17th Hole:
The Eisenhower tree stands like a sentinel guarding the left portion of the fairway. It was so named because President Eisenhower hit it so often during his rounds at Augusta in the 1950s. The pros used to blithely fly the ball right over it, but since the tee was moved back to make the hole play 440 yards some of them have found it to be in play again.
18th Hole:
The chute from the back tee would be enough to strike fear in any average player. In fact, the tall trees on the left that form that side of the chute don't even start until about 120 yards from the tee and they continue all the way to practically the landing area for pros. So it's really less of a chute than a gauntlet. Gone are the days when Tiger Woods launched a drive partly over and partly around the trees to the right from the old tee in 2001 and hit a sand wedge to the green.
